[UCI-Linux] use your home smtp server from anywhere with ssh

[Harry Mangalam]

I'm temporarily out in beautiful Boulder and the broadband connection where 
I'm living right now is flaky and fitful to the point where I could not get 
teh default smtp server to work, leaving at teh mercies of webmail, but a 
sysadmin at NCAR showed me how to use my home SMTP server more or less 
transparently. 

This may be widely known, but it's the first time I've used it and it beats 
trying to find out and then modify the smtp server in all your mail clients.  
It's a variant on the X-forwarding using ssh.

Establish a port-forwarding connection to your home machine with a high unused 
port on your localhost, say 2025.  the command is:

ssh -L 2025:smtp.west.cox.net:25 ibonk

it means: use port 2025 on your localhost (-L) to connect to your home ISP 
smtp server (smtp.west.cox.net in my case) on the standard port 25 (:25) via 
your home machine (ibonk).

As long as the ssh connection is in place it forwards all smtp traffic to your 
home machine which can then connect to your std smtp server to relay mail.

-- 
Cheers, Harry
Harry J Mangalam - 949 856 2847 (vox; email for fax) - hjm at tacgi.com 
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